


Memento Vivere

by orphan_account



Category: SHINee
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, Horror, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-16
Updated: 2014-12-16
Packaged: 2018-03-01 16:51:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2780579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are ghosts in Jonghyun's attic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memento Vivere

He played such beautiful music.

 

There were no rumors about the house. No real estate agent took his mother aside to hesitantly whisper, "Well, there is  _one_ other thing"; no old crone stopped them in the supermarket to screech apocalyptic warnings. It's an old house, to be sure, with cracked brick fireplaces and big bay windows, railings that collect dust the minute you turn your head and whole wings of covered furniture that look as though they've been left untouched for decades. His mother assures him, as if she's assuring herself, that it's just a fixer-upper, nothing to be worried about. But he's a boy, and he's fifteen, and this is the kind of old house ghost stories were built around - so of course it isn't normal. 

They moved here from the city. His mother, and his sister, and him. They had lived in Seoul all of their lives, but his mother's firm gave her an offer too good to pass up. There hadn't been a husband to consult for a while, and his sister was excited to get away from her old, toxic friends. Jonghyun's didn't particularly care - he would be leaving for college in two years, and cutting ties would make it hurt less in the future. He protested for Kibum's sake, but once he saw the house the argument stopped.

Kibum made him promise to write. 

He claimed the attic bedroom the first time he saw it, because at the time he was thinking of himself as a romantic. The truth is, you can see everything up here - once he beat the dust out of the old velvet curtains and pinned them back, he could see the whole town and the country around it too, far, far away into the rolling fields of wheat and soybeans. His sister points out that it's not much of a view compared to Seoul. Jonghyun ignores her. 

The first night in their ancient new house, he leaves the window open; the midnight countryside noises escort him to sleep as peacefully as a melody. The patterns the moonlight throws against his bedroom wall could almost be shadows. 

 

At breakfast, his sister asks him if he saw any ghosts last night. Their mother rolls her eyes and tells them stop bickering. Jonghyun purses his lips and sticks out his tongue when her back is turned. His sister grins in response.

"Me neither," she mouths. And then: "Not yet, at least."

This time it's Jonghyun's turn to roll his eyes.

The school is almost as small as their house. Second year is one class, crowded desk-to-desk in an already cramped back room. There's a flurry of interest when the year's teacher announces the new student from Seoul, but Jonghyun avoids the inquiring looks shot his way with a blank face. He chooses the seat in the last row, next to the back window. They stop trying after a week or so.

His teacher watches him when he thinks he isn't looking.

 

 _Kibum_ (his letter begins):

_I'm not really sure what else to tell you. Not much has changed. I doubt anything has changed here for the last 100 years. There are some new apartment complexes near downtown, but everyone mostly lives in houses like mine. Hyunjin says it's a town full of ghosts. I thought you'd like that._

_School? It's... not really that exciting. I haven't really been talking to people, which I guess is rude but it's like, I'm leaving in two years anyway. It's not really worth trying. No, there aren't any hot girls. Uh, Mr. Lee? I don't know, he's kind of ditzy. Young, too. I think he might be into me. Whatever, though, as long as he keeps giving me As in English I'm good._

_Yeah, yeah. I'll show you when you come this summer, it's not_ that _exciting. (You_ are _coming, right?) Hey - my letters are about Hicktown, SK, yours are about Seoul. Why are mine six times longer? Illiteracy is a serious problem, Kibum-ah._

_(Read this at my funeral if the house ghost eats me. Try to live on without me, although I know it will be difficult.)_

_\- JH_

 

He spends his afternoons exploring the house. His mother clicks her tongue and his sister calls him a shut-in, but he's always been more comfortable alone. It's probably why he and his best friend get on so well - neither of them mind solitude, or distance, for that matter.

It's half for Kibum that he's doing this, anyway. He's been mad with envy ever since he heard about Jonghyun's crumbling mansion - he thinks it's like something out of a fairytale, or a horror novel. He sent Jonghyun a camera (a cheap disposable one, the postage to send the pictures probably cost more than the thing itself) with strict instructions to show him _everything_ (underlined twice). Jonghyun tries.

He began with the first floor. He photographs the cracked cement walk his mother keeps sighing about fixing and won't, not until he inevitably busts his head open tripping on an undone shoelace. He snaps shots of the door knockers shaped like sneering lions, and the rat-eaten carpet, a pale, washed-out shade of its formal majesty. He catches his mother off-guard as she sleeps over that night's dish-washing, and sends it along with a shot of a surprised Hyunjin flipping him off. He takes pictures of the wheelchair hidden in a closet on the first floor; the stain in the kitchen their mother thought was blood until she realized it was the exact color of the rat poison in the cabinet (followed shortly by the realization that there needed to have been rats to warrant this rat poison; she still won't take her shoes off within the house); the antique piano he uncovered on the second floor; the view of the front yard indigo patch from the kitchen window; the initials etched in the backyard's towering oak. Himself smiling.

He stuffs them in an envelope, and waits for Kibum to send the next camera.

 

It's two weeks before he hears him for the first time.

He's dreaming; he's not sure if he's actually asleep, but the music blends with the dream so seamlessly he doesn't notice the difference. It's such a soft sound that for a moment Jonghyun thinks he left the window open again. Maybe it's someone down the street, or just the wind - but no, it's too close. It's so close.

The imperfect, stuttering blend of piano and voice is, in that moments, the most beautiful sound Jonghyun has ever heard.

His dream stops with the music, so that he's awake as abruptly as he began dreaming. He stares at the ceiling, sweat on his brow and jackhammer beneath his ribs. The house is completely silent, no matter how hard he strains to hear something, anything. He can't recall anything else about the dream. There is just the music.

The boy sounded so sad.

 

He doesn't remember in the morning.

 

Mr. Lee has been watching him.

He's a good teacher, but is prone to tangents and sentiment. He's lived here all his life, he explains to them during what should be an economic lesson, grew up on a street not far from here.

"Why did you stay?" one of the girls, the class president, asks seriously. 

Mr. Lee shrugs and grins. "The memories, I guess," he responds, smile only widening as the class titters. "No, don't laugh," he admonishes cheerfully, "don't. You all might want to get out of here as soon as possible, but this town, there are a lot of ghosts living here. It's interesting - at least, for me."

He beams out at the class. His gaze, maybe, lingers on Jonghyun a moment longer than it should. He bends his head to his desk and continues his letter to Kibum. He can feel eyes watching him for a long time after.

 

Kibum's return letter is full of envy and astonishment. He tells Jonghyun that there's no way he's not coming next summer, that Jonghyun has to show him _everything_ , that the next roll of film had better be full by this time next week. Jonghyun feels a brief pang of regret - he _misses_ Kibum - but he buries it after a moment. He throws himself back into his continued documentation. On one level, he's so bored with this town that it's the only thing to do - but really, this house is just so beautiful. His mother tells him _get a job_ ; his sister tells him _get a friend_ ; he tells them, _get out of the way, I need to get a shot of that cellar door._

Sometimes it feels like the house is much older than it seems, and at others, much, much younger. There's an aluminum bat with Japanese characters printed up the side in the tool-shed, and a small black-and-white television in one of the upstairs bedrooms. It only gets two channels, though, and fades to static after a few days. Jonghyun takes a picture anyway. He hears laughter a moment after he does so, but he assumes his sister is on the phone with her friends. She's made so many here, he thinks absently, although not wistfully.

The piano is one of his favorite mysteries about the house. He removed the sheet to a cloud of dust a few weeks ago, and hasn't touched it since - but when he climbed up to the second floor a few days ago the keys were pristine and clean, as though someone had brushed all the residual soot away. He hasn't touched it since, but every time he goes up there (and it's quite a lot, now, he likes that room, the French-style windows that let the light right through the late afternoon) the keys are as white as if someone had handled them just a few moments before. He remembers his sister's words about the ghost in the attic, and grins.

 

It happens for the second time the night after he touches the keys. It had been a slip of his hand, really: he'd been trying to get a picture of the crystal chandelier in the center of the drawing room, and his fingers had brushed against the middle of the keyboard long enough to produce a long, clear 'D' note. It sounded perfect, as though it had been tuned just that morning, but he dismissed it as another byproduct of this mysterious house, absorbed in his photography as he was. It nags at the back of his mind, the piano, the music, but he ignores it readily enough. At least, until that night.

 

He's awake this time; he had been dreaming he was down a rabbit hole, but the note wakes him up as effectively as an alarm clock. He lays in bed, eyes closed, heartbeat racing. The note echoes through the floorboards. It fades into silence after a minute, and Jonghyun forces his eyes to remain shut, forces himself to listen for the tell-tale creak of his mother's footsteps a floor below. _Maybe_ , he tells himself, _it was just my imagination, just a part of the dream-_

It sounds again, louder this time. The exact note he played this afternoon.

It takes all of Jonghyun's courage not to scream right then. The sound is there, stuck in his throat, but he can't, for some reason - can't scream, can't speak, can't move. It's not terror, though, this pulse in his throat - rather, _anticipation_.

The second note fades and the house is silent once more. The absence of sound is horrific. 

When the third note rings out, it is expected. That doesn't stop the blood from chilling where it runs in Jonghyun's veins. As this note fades, Jonghyun's heartbeat only increases, pounding faster, faster, so fast it threatens to break his ribs. He strains, waiting, body tuned for the sound of footsteps, his mother's laugh, a fourth note - It is silent after that, though. No footsteps come.

He doesn't move for the rest of the night.

 

"Mom," he asks, trying to keep his voice casual, "did you play piano last night?"

His mother looks up at him, surprised. "No," she responds, "no, I haven't played in years. Were you dreaming?"

Jonghyun hesitates, and nods. "Yeah," he says softly. His mother clicks her tongue and turns back to her computer. Jonghyun lingers for a moment, before climbing back up the stairs. He's sweating.

It was a dream, Jonghyun repeats to himself. It was a dream.

 

_Kibum:_

_I failed an English test... I guess Mr. Lee doesn't "like" like me. I'm heartbroken, as you can imagine._

_What do you mean about the pictures? The only people that should be on there are me and Mom and Hyunjin. Maybe it was one of Hyunjin's friends? I'll ask her. (Although I don't think Mom would let her bring a guy home.)_

_\- JH_

 

He would have dismissed it, had it not been for Kibum's letter. In the days after that midnight recital he had been scared, yes, but after a week passed with no other such incident, he began to convince himself that it was just what it should be, a dream. As hard as he held to this conviction, however, he couldn't shake off the dread in his stomach whenever he passed the piano on the second floor, or excuse the chill in his bones at Kibum's letter.  _Who was that boy at the end of the roll..._

The film negatives are hidden in a box underneath his bed. He never looked at them himself - he let Kibum develop them himself, lazy as he was - but now he tears frantically through them until he finds the role in question, from the most recent set of pictures. He forces himself to slow down, then, slowly unrolling the amber-tinted negatives and holding them up to the shaft of afternoon sun illuminating his attic bedroom. His mother, laughing as she tries to swat his camera away. The cracked window of the toolshed out back, a stain of rust or blood on its jagged edge. Jonghyun, sticking his tongue out at the camera with a grin on his face. A boy, his back hunched to the piano and his face turned away from the camera, as though he couldn't bear to be seen.

The canister echoes loudly as it drops to the floor, but Jonghyun makes no move to retrieve it. He is paralyzed, frozen still by the most acute sense of fear he has ever experienced. _But-_ , he can hear himself thinking, as though he is detached from his body, an outside observer looking in, _but no one was here, that day... No one has ever been here..._

_No one was here that night..._

He feels eyes on the back of his neck, but when he finally works up the courage to turn, there is nothing.

 

Jonghyun is awake when the music starts this time. The song is light, playful. It speaks of laughter and sunlight and better days. The warmth of the melody is undone only by the ever-present knowledge that _this isn't right_. He lifts his hand above his face, turning it over in the moonlight with a horrified sort of fascination. If it's real... than so is this.

 _Who are you,_ he whispers, except his mouth doesn't move. The music only gets louder. It sounds like laughter.

He asks his mother and sister if they heard anything last night; they look at him curiously, shaking their heads 'no'.

"Getting jumpy in the attic?" his sister teases. "Hearing ghosts?"  _  
_

Jonghyun shakes his head mutely. He can't bring himself to answer.

 

But God, it's such beautiful music.

 

Exploring quickly loses its charm. The echoing hallways he spent hours getting lost in have become twisted labyrinths; the backroom wardrobes are no longer quaint afternoon distractions, but rather shadowy possibilities. The bags under his eyes grow in tandem with his worries: _I'm going insane,_ he thinks, _I'm hearing music that isn't there, I'm seeing ghosts when_ ghosts _don't exist_. It's a trick of the mind, he tells himself, a delusion created by his own loneliness.

That doesn't stop him from waiting, every night.

He stops sleeping - at night, at least. He dozes off during school, but nights are for the music. The bags under his eyes grow and his grades drop, but he doesn't care. The itch to explore is replaced by an itch to listen, to hear that music just once more, just another night. He convinces himself that he is going insane. He finds that he doesn't care.

 

He's not sure when it became a comfort, rather than a terror. He's not sure when he began to look forward to it, rather than shy away in fear.

He's not sure when he started believing in ghosts.

 

He discovers the picture a week or so later. He's resumed his exploration of the house - driven by his need to distract himself, or maybe to find something that will vindicate his sanity. He avoids the second floor.

It's hidden in a small room tucked away on the third floor, right beneath his attic. It's a tiny bedroom with a window that opens up onto the oak tree outside. The only other furnishings are a small child's bed and an empty set of drawers. Jonghyun had looked through them back in the early weeks, but they hadn't yielded anything other than a coating of dust, and he'd soon abandoned it for other, more interesting conquests.

Now, however - he wouldn't say he's drawn to it, but it doesn't feel like it was entirely his own intuition that pushed him towards the mattress. He's never really put stock in fate, but then again, he's not really sure what he believes anymore.

It's crumpled and faded; from the coloring, it's been hidden for at least 20 years. The oak in the front yard is the same height as it is now, but the old doesn't look so old, and the carved initials are still fresh enough that, if he squints his eyes, he can make them out. _LT, LJ_ , he reads. Something stirs in the back of his mind, but he loses it as fast as it comes.

The boy is his age, or a little younger. His back is to the camera, but his head is tilted to the side, just enough that Jonghyun can catch the smile spread across his face. He looks so happy. He looks so young.

Jonghyun turns over the photograph, not sure what he's looking for. It's written in the upper-left hand corner in fading, cramped handwriting: _'74, LT._

 

He hides the photograph under his bed for no reason that he can name: loneliness, sentiment, his own comfort. Maybe he'll send it to Kibum, he thinks - he hasn't written him in a while, he's been so preoccupied with this... whatever this house is. He lies in bed for a long time that night, eyes and ears open. The sound of piano keys never come.

He falls asleep a few hours later. When he wakes up, the picture is gone.

 

_Kibum:_

_Yeah, I understand. No, it's fine, exams come first. I'll figure out when I can visit. I don't know if it'll be for a while, school is getting pretty intense. Sorry._

_\- JH_

 

By the time the music reappears, Jonghyun is feeling somewhat frantic. The - the _piano player_ (he will not say ghost, he won't) hasn't shown up since he discovered the picture a week ago. Jonghyun thinks he might have offended it - though how you offend a figment of your imagination, he doesn't know.

The song is short and angry, all thundering chords and echoing sharps. It sounds like a reprimand, or as much of one as a song can, and Jonghyun inexplicably finds himself whispering 'I'm sorry' as the last note is fading. It's not so much of a shock that he means it.

There's a short silence, as though the musician is considering his apology (no, as if his damaged mind is coming up with a suitable response), and then - slowly, a smatter of notes in a much higher key than before. Grudging acceptance.

Jonghyun feels his lips curve into a smile.

 

Mr. Lee begins watching Jonghyun. Well, he always watched him, but now - now, if Jonghyun wasn't already preoccupied he would find himself worried.

Mr. Lee watches him in the cafeteria as he eats alone in the corner. Mr. Lee watches him as he dozes off during History. Mr. Lee watches him when he trudges through the courtyard on the way home from school. When Jonghyun, annoyed, catches his eye, he doesn't flush and turn away like he would before. Instead, he meets Jonghyun's gaze, expression thoughtful.

Jonghyun would ignore his teacher as another backwater oddity - but he can't help flinching every time he feels those eyes on the back of his neck. Sometimes he finds himself wondering if Mr. Lee suspects. (Then Mr. Lee walks into an open door, twice. Jonghyun dismisses it.)

 

The music comes more frequently now, and for greater intervals. Jonghyun starts to think that he can hear _messages_ in the melody - he constructs pictures in his head with every stanza, nuances and emotions gradually making themselves clear as the days pass. His earlier fear drains away as the player familiarizes himself with Jonghyun. It was stupid, his terror; understandable, but stupid. The player shows him his world through the music; years of silence, a seeming eternity of loneliness and piano keys - and then, and _then_. A boy with a beautiful smile and eyes as empty as his own (the player is a he, Jonghyun knows this without thought). He feels foolish for scaring Jonghyun, but he's so eager, so happy that someone can understand him, after all these years, alone-

It's a while before Jonghyun realizes that his only friend in this town is a ghost, but by then, he's too mesmerized to care.

 

_Kibum:_

_No. Why were you writing to my mother?_

_No. I'm fine. Just drop it, please._

_I'm fine._

_\- JH_

 

He starts sleeping during the day, in order to spend nights listening to the the music. He misses school, and the officials notice. His mother tells him, "go outside, go make friends, please, get out of this house." He ignores her, watching the sun slip behind the tree-tops and smiling. He'll be here soon.

 

There's only one rule. Jonghyun isn't allowed to look.

 

 _I was 15,_ the ghost tells him.

 _I broke my legs,_ the ghost tells him.

 _I was a dancer,_ the ghost tells him.

 _It was suicide,_ the ghost tells him.

 

The microfilm hasn't been touched in years, and Jonghyun coughs as the dust-clouds rise. He sits for hours, scanning headlines from '74 to '75, searching for - for something. For a date. For an accident. For a name.

He finds it four hours later, squashed between the obituary of a 80 year old woman and a recipe column. _\- mourn the passing of their son, who took his life today at the age of 15. Lee Taemin was hospitalized six months ago after a fall from a third-story window broke both of his legs. Although he had been making a swift recovery, it was revealed that doctors predicted that he would never be able to walk again. A schoolmate, Lee Jinki, reportedly found the body; he was unavailable for comment. Lee is survived by his mother, father, and an older sister. The memorial will be held on Jun-_

Jonghyun shuts off the machine with a click. His heartbeat is racing; his palms are sweating.

Lee Taemin.

 

 _Taemin_ , Jonghyun whispers into the darkness. His voice is a mere thread of sound. _Taemin._

The song - a description of elation, happiness, movement - cuts off as abruptly as it came. Jonghyun swallows, his mouth as dry as bone. _Lee Taemin_ , he whispers a third time.

A minute passes. Two. Five. Jonghyun's breath is becoming erratic - what if, what if, what if - what if that was the wrong thing to say, what if he never-

One note. A 'C'. _Yes._

 _Jonghyun,_ the ghost, _Taemin_ plays, and he chokes in relief.

 

Mr. Lee shows up at his house the next week. He sits Jonghyun down at the kitchen table, tells him that he understands depression, he understands loneliness, he understands grief, and he's here for Jonghyun, whenever he needs to talk.

"Come back to school," Mr. Lee says, smiling at Jonghyun across the kitchen table, "come back, and we'll help you, Jonghyun. We'll make sure you're okay."

There is a barrage of chords from upstairs (Taemin has started showing himself during the day, and Jonghyun has stopped leaving the house). _Make him go away,_ Taemin is saying, and Jonghyun does just that. He nods his head, and smiles, and tells Mr. Lee that he'll be there next week, he's ready to be helped, he's ready to come out of his exile. They both know that he's lying.

When they reach the door, Mr. Lee takes Jonghyun's hands in his own, such a sudden invasion of his personal space that Jonghyun flinches. It's been days since he touched another human, he realizes.

"You've heard him," Mr. Lee whispers, searching Jonghyun's eyes for an unknown sign, for some hint Jonghyun can only guess at. "Taemin - you've heard him, he's spoken to you-"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Jonghyun says, as Taemin dictates in G-minor. He removes Mr. Lee's hands from his own, and stubbornly forces him out the door. "And I don't know anyone named Taemin." He shuts the door in his teacher's face.

The music sounds pleased.

 

 _Jonghyun,_ Taemin says, _I'm so lonely, all by myself. Are you lonely, too?_

Jonghyun lays in bed, eyes shut, lips parting as the music fills his ears. _No,_ he whispers, _not anymore._ The next chord sounds like a giggle.

 

_Kibum:_

_Nothing's wrong._

_Everything is fine._

_\- JH_

 

Jonghyun hasn't left his bedroom in four days. Taemin has been talking to him nonstop for the past week: explaining his life, explaining his accident, explaining how _lonely_ he's been for the past twenty years, without anyone to talk to. Jonghyun saved him, he says. Jonghyun is his best friend. Jonghyun is his favorite.

"Please," his mother sobs, "we'll take you back to the city, we'll take you anywhere. Just, stop."

Jonghyun doesn't know why she would want him to leave. The music is so beautiful.

 

 _Jonghyun,_ Taemin asks, _Jonghyun, do you like me?_

The answer is an affirmative, of course. _I like you more than anything,_ he whispers, straining to hear the music.

 _Jonghyun,_ Taemin repeats, tone coy, _do you want to be with me forever?_

Jonghyun doesn't think, can't think about anything, anything but the music. _Yes,_ he hears himself whisper, _of course._

 _Jonghyun,_ Taemin says, _come downstairs._

 

Taemin is, if anything, more beautiful than the music.

(Taemin _is_ the music.)

He smiles up at Jonghyun, as blithe and sweet as the vanished photograph. His legs are broken and bleeding, and his eyes are untouched silver, but his fingers dart across the keys as though they were shaped purely to create this sound, purely for ivory. Jonghyun can't find his breath as he watches, mesmerized, and realizes a moment later - he doesn't want to.

 _Jonghyun,_ Taemin whispers in F-major, _Jonghyun, come closer._

Jonghyun leans in, leans closer to the music.

Taemin's lips brush against his own.

It sounds so beautiful. It sounds like a scream.

 

His body is splayed out under the old oak tree, in the exact spot as that poor Lee boy's was 20 years ago. His legs are broken in three different places, but his smile as as beautiful as a springtime day. He's clutching a photograph in his hand, but it's too faded for anyone to make out who it is.

 

Kibum arrives for the funeral three days later, with a black suit and red eyes. Jonghyun's mother hasn't stopped crying since she discovered the body four days back, but Hyunjin has gone mute, her eyes frozen in wide horror.

The only other person to attend the funeral is Mr. Lee. He stares at Jonghyun's body in silence, expression troubled, eyes wary. He smiles when Jonghyun's mother thanks him for coming, and tells her "it was nothing."

 

Kibum walks them back to the house, his arms wrapped around Jonghyun's mothers shoulder. He sits her in the kitchen, getting a glass from the sink and measuring in a liberal amount of vodka. "You shouldn't do that," she whispers, the first thing she's said in an hour, but she drinks it in one shot, and Kibum laughs without humor.

They sit in silence for the better part of the night, their own sort of wake. Jonghyun's sister disappeared after the funeral; she'll come back the next morning, or maybe she won't. Jonghyun's mother starts sobbing around eight, loud, angry, desperate sobs. Kibum reminds dry-eyed, dry-lipped. He stares around the kitchen, around the house, and his eyes are blank.

He hears it in the midnight hours, when Jonghyun's mother has poured herself another few dozen shots of vodka and Hyunjin still hasn't returned home. He thinks it's his imagination, at first, or the wind; but, no. Wind doesn't have that pitch; wind doesn't have that melody.

"Did you hear that," Kibum whispers, cocking his head to the side. "Did you hear that music?"

"No," says Jonghyun's mother, looking at him oddly, sadly. Her eyes are bloodshot. "No, I don't hear a thing."

Kibum remains frozen in place, eyes wide. "But I could have sworn-" he says softly.

 _I'm so lonely,_ the song whispers.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted at ~yassan.livejournal.com


End file.
